Came across this email from a group called Advocates for Youth. Some of the topics discussed in it have been mentioned here on MANN already. Please take a minute and *politely* contact AFY and ask them to take the gender-blinders off and include males (after all, they are young at some point as well) as imperatively in their campaigns as they do females. Email follows:

We have some GREAT news to share.

Earlier this week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that starting in August 2012, all new health insurance plans will be required to cover contraception at no cost — including condoms, birth control pills, contraceptive shots, and IUDs. This means that co-payments, which have long been a barrier to many women accessing contraception, will no longer be an issue for women with health insurance!

PRESS RELEASE-Aug. 3, 2011

FATHERS' ADVOCATES MOVE TO REPEAL MASSACHUSETTS DOMESTIC ABUSE LAW

Boston - Members of The Fatherhood Coalition submitted an Initiative Petition to the Mass. Attorney General's office to remove the Massachusetts 209A restraining order law and restore due process rights.

According to Joe Ureneck, chairman for the group, the current restraining order system, misused and abused, is destroying families.

There is not one independent scientific study that the current law has met the desired effect of protecting men and women who truly need help, Ureneck said. Petitioners believe the law unjustly throws fathers out of children’s lives and created a more violent society as all studies demonstrate that when children grow up without a father in the home, they grow up to be more violent teens and adults, both men and women.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In one of the most outrageous injustices of our time, Peter Spitz (pictured right) was separated from his son and almost lost custody of him after his ex-wife shot him in the face and murdered his mother.

Fathers and Families advised Peter, helped him get legal counsel, and also publicized his case, and we are pleased to announce that Peter has now won full custody of his seven-year-old son.

Special credit and thanks goes to talented Colorado family law attorney Brett Martin (pictured below), who took on Spitz’s case and won a decisive victory–the court decision is here.

We also thank Fathers and Families Board Member Robert Franklin, Esq., who covered this case extensively and helped to advise Peter–his write-up of the new decision is below.'

Via email:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released its Women's Preventive Services requirements for qualified health plans yesterday. Some of the rules are reasonable, like screening for diabetes in pregnant women.

But the document requires that health plans conduct "screening and counseling for interpersonal and domestic violence" on an annual basis for women...but not men: http://www.hrsa.gov/womensguidelines

The rule was issued exactly three weeks after Catherine Becker of California drugged and bound her husband. Then she severed and disposed of his genitalia. If he had sought medical care prior to the incident and the doctor had performed an abuse screening, it's possible the gruesome event never would have occurred.

Article here. Great to see it in the news, too. Excerpt:

'ANN ARBOR, MI--Therapist and author Ken Land is seeking true, first-person accounts of men who have suffered abuse in relationships with women. The Ann Arbor-based therapist began the project in 2006 as an effort to raise awareness and support for male victims of abuse. Land is the Founder and Clinical Director of The Counseling Center of Ann Arbor, a comprehensive outpatient mental health and substance abuse clinic located in downtown Ann Arbor since 1983.

"Men are often victims of physical, verbal, and emotional abuse in relationships," says Land. "Their stories go untold for a variety of reasons: shame, guilt, feeling 'unmanly' and the justifiable belief that now one will believe them. And the criminal justice system is often either unresponsive, dismissive or biased in the favor of the woman."

Story here. Excerpt:

'A woman allegedly beat her boyfriend to death with the spiked heel of a stiletto shoe.

Thelma Carter, 46, struck her live-in boyfriend Robert Higdon, 58, with the shoe at their trailer park home in Augusta, Georgia, police said.

Authorities are unsure how many times Mr Higdon was hit with the shoe before he died.

Carter has been charged with murder.'

Somewhat tastelessly, there is a link on the page to a completely unrelated January 2011 magazine section article entitled "More on circumcision: The Kindest Cut" about HIV/AIDS and mass circumcision in Swaziland, presumably to down-play the grotesqueness of this article. Link here. Excerpt:

'Similar attacks were recorded elsewhere in Kibera and in other parts of the country, including the volatile Rift Valley, up until late February 2008, when Kibaki and Odinga reached a power-sharing deal. The lack of reporting on the part of victims, however, has complicated efforts to arrive at a national total. A government inquiry noted, for instance, that many victims in the Rift Valley were "too traumatized" to come forward.

Via email:

Stop Abusive and Violent Environments is pleased to announce that the Dr. Phil Show will be featuring a program devoted to the topic of male victims of domestic violence. The program will be aired in mid-September. The show will feature SAVE spokesman Philip W. Cook and several male victims of partner abuse.

The decision to devote a program to male victims followed Dr. Phil McGraw's testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 13, 2011 - see SAVE's July 25 press release:

http://www.saveservices.org/2011/07/press-release-dr-phil%E2%80%99s-testimony-was-%E2%80%98reckless-and-false%E2%80%99-group-charges

For more information on how domestic violence programs discriminate against male victims, see SAVE's Special Report:

http://www.saveservices.org/downloads/Domestic-Violence-Programs-Discriminate-Against-Male-Victims

Article here. Excerpt:

'A WOMAN who threatened to make a false rape claim against a taxi driver has been jailed for robbing him.

Brighouse Taxis employee Mohammed Asif had picked up Natalie Woods in Rastrick, along with Nicola Cliberon and Mark Mbye, and was taking them into Huddersfield town centre last November when she began making fake sexual advances towards him.

Prosecutor Simon Batiste said Mr Asif eventually stopped the taxi and asked for his fare, but after Cliberon and Mbye got out Woods, 38, who was in the front passenger seat, asked him to drive further up Chapel Lane.

At one stage Woods told the cabbie to give her his money or she would scream and say that he had tried to rape her.

Mr Asif called Woods' bluff and threatened to call the police, but she asked him not to and he drove the car back down the street.'

Link to news release here. Excerpt:

'Historic new guidelines that will ensure women receive preventive health services at no additional cost were announced today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Developed by the independent Institute of Medicine, the new guidelines require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services such as well-woman visits, breastfeeding support, domestic violence screening, and contraception without charging a co-payment, co-insurance or a deductible.

“The Affordable Care Act helps stop health problems before they start,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need.”

Before health reform, too many Americans didn’t get the preventive health care they need to stay healthy, avoid or delay the onset of disease, lead productive lives, and reduce health care costs. Often because of cost, Americans used preventive services at about half the recommended rate.'

Article here. If Mila Kunis doesn't think she's taken seriosly because of her looks, maybe she shouldn't pose in her underwear for GQ magazine. Excerpt:

'Mila Kunis thinks women can be taken seriously as comedians in Hollywood -- but it's hard.

"The bottom line is if you're an attractive female in this industry, people just take you as that: attractive. People aren't getting the opportunity to move beyond being attractive," she tells the August issue of GQ while promoting her new movie, Friends With Benefits, in theaters July 22.

"It's not only with comedy. It could be with drama or action or whatever. People are distracted by looks. It happens. I'm not saying it happened to me, but it happens," she continues.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'It about time that someone told this woman what she needed to hear and if she can't stand the heat, she should stay out of the kitchen. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has repeated taunted West in public, even heading up a protest march outside West's campaign headquarters. She has made earlier charges against this man, claiming that he associated with vicious, degrading attitudes toward women because he contributed a column to a biker magazine that some found objectionable.

Well what is good for the goose, is good for the gander, and Ms. Schultz, along with her cackle of fellow women, are acting completely inappropriately. Politics is a dirty game, and Schultz has demonstrated her ability to play the game as well as any one else, male or female. But now that someone is standing up to her, and gives her a taste of her own medicine, the poor little victim cries sexism. Well too bad for Debbie Wasserman Schultz.'

Came across this essay. The way I see it, broadly, there are two different kinds of MRAs. There are non-traditionalists who want to see men given equal opportunity to be liberated from traditional role constraints (and it's this camp I definitely fall into since IMJ it represents the greatest chance for equal justice for men) and the traditionalists who want to see society return to a more traditional approach to gender roles. This essay is one in defense of traditionalism. So while I am not of this POV, and I feel the author injects prejudice and overgeneralization in several key areas of his arguments, I do see the practical issue relevance it raises in terms of certain specific gender roles, especially where the raising of children is concerned. It's hard to deny, for example, that boys raised without fathers have a much harder time of it than boys raised with fathers, and numerous studies bear this out. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'It looks as if the City by the Bay won't vote on a circumcision ban after all.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Loretta Giorgi ruled Thursday that the measure to criminalize circumcision must be withdrawn from the November ballot because it would violate a California law that makes regulating medical procedures a state -- not a city -- matter.

Giorgi then ordered San Francisco's election director to remove the measure from city ballots.

The ban would have made it illegal to "circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the whole or any part of the foreskin, testicles or penis of another person who has not attained the age of 18 years." And under that ban, any person who performed circumcisions would face a misdemeanor charge and have to pay up to a fine of up to $1,000 or serve a maximum of one year in prison.

...
"This is the most direct assault on Jewish religious practice in the United States," said Stern. "It's unprecedented in American Jewish life."

Story here. It's very possible parental alienation was a factor in his suicide. Excerpt:

'Irabu pitched in an American independent league and signed with a Japanese team in recent years while living with his family in Southern California. Neighbors believe Irabu had grown despondent recently because of a split with his wife.

Mary Feuerlicht said she was about to go pick up her son on Wednesday morning when a man came running down the driveway from Irabu's large two-story home, perched atop a hill with views of the harbor and downtown Los Angeles, pleading with her to call police.

Feuerlicht said she was later told by sheriff's deputies and the man who asked her for help that Irabu's wife had left him, taking their two young daughters. She hadn't seen Irabu's wife and children for two months, but said the family regularly left town for the summer.'